Self compiled version of EIM breaks with `Could not connect to localhost: Connection refused` (EIM-959)

[nagmat84]

Checklist

• Checked the issue tracker for similar issues to ensure this is not a duplicate
• Read the documentation to confirm the issue is not addressed there and your configuration is set correctly
• Tested with the latest version to ensure the issue hasn't been fixed

How often does this bug occurs?

always

Expected behavior

Self-compiled and packaged EIM should work.

Actual behavior (suspected bug)

I compiled EIM from sources to create a Gentoo package for it. Whenever I start EIM, GUI or CLI version, I immediately get the error message "Could not connect to localhost: Connection refused". See screenshot

I suspected to potential culprits: a failing telemetry service or a failure to download repository/package from Github/Espressif. However, I also tried to start eim with eim --do-not-track true to rule out it is the first one, but it didn't make any difference.

What compile-time option do I have to set that EIM uses the correct URLs?

I looked through some scripts. I found the environment variable APP_INSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING which is set to secrets.APP_INSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING, however this shouldn't cause any trouble if --do-not-track is set. Despite that I didn't find any compile-time setting which looked related.

Error logs or terminal output

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Checkout out EIM sources
2. Fire up Cargo and compule EIM
3. Start EIM

Project release version

0.17.1

System architecture

Intel/AMD 64-bit (modern PC, older Mac)

Operating system

Linux

Operating system version

Gentoo

Shell

Bash

Additional context

No response

[Hahihula]

Hi @nagmat84, thanks for the detailed report.

Unfortunately, we're not able to investigate platform-specific issues on Gentoo. Moreover you failed to include logs in your report. It's a very niche distribution within our user base, and we don't have the infrastructure or resources to test and support it.

The Could not connect to localhost: Connection refused error suggests that one of the local services EIM relies on is not starting or is not reachable. The most likely causes are:

• the GUI being unable to communicate with the underlying Rust backend service, or
• one of the local HTTP/HTTPS services used by EIM (for example, during connectivity or SSL-related checks) failing to start correctly.

Without a supported Gentoo environment to reproduce the issue, it's unfortunately not something we're able to debug further.

This is also one of the main reasons we don't officially support Gentoo. Supporting an additional distribution isn't just about making the application compile—it also requires ongoing testing, validation, and investigation of platform-specific runtime issues like this one. At this time, adding Gentoo to our supported platforms and providing official support for it is out of scope.

If you're interested in debugging it further yourself, we'd certainly welcome any findings or pull requests that improve portability. However, we can't commit to investigating or maintaining Gentoo-specific issues.

[nagmat84]

Without a supported Gentoo environment to reproduce the issue, it's unfortunately not something we're able to debug further.

I understand that. I am also willing to some "light" debugging. By that I mean, I am willing to inspect log files or even skip trough some source code and see if there is anything suspicious. However, I won't setup a full Rust build environment and debugger. I have no experience with Rust and for a one-time-off project that too much of a hassle. (If it had been C/C++ I would probably just have committed a pull request with a fix.)

Moreover you failed to include logs in your report.

How do I produce useful logs? Is there some hidden command line argument which create a verbose log or print more debug messages to stdout? At the moment, I simply get Could not connect to localhost: Connection refused immediately after the program starts.

[Hahihula]

I understand that. I am also willing to some "light" debugging. By that I mean, I am willing to inspect log files or even skip trough some source code and see if there is anything suspicious. However, I won't setup a full Rust build environment and debugger. I have no experience with Rust and for a one-time-off project that too much of a hassle. (If it had been C/C++ I would probably just have committed a pull request with a fix.)

Then how did you get self compiled artifacts? Can you please explain to me how did you run the EIM from sources without having a full Rust build environment and debugger

How do I produce useful logs? Is there some hidden command line argument which create a verbose log or print more debug messages to stdout? At the moment, I simply get Could not connect to localhost: Connection refused immediately after the program starts.

https://docs.espressif.com/projects/idf-im-ui/en/latest/issue_reporting.html

[nagmat84]

Then how did you get self compiled artifacts? Can you please explain to me how did you run the EIM from sources without having a full Rust build environment and debugger

Of course, I installed a Rust build environment and Cargo using Gentoo package manager. However, using Cargo and Rust to simply build an application which comes with a build script and actively debugging an application are two completely different shoes.

To do the first one neither needs much knowledge about Cargo and absolutely no Rust experience if one has a lot of experience with other programming languages and build systems (CMake, Ninja, Autotools, C/C++, Java, Python, ...). If you know one, you know all. The steps are always the same: configure the sources, then build the app, finally install it.

To do the second you need knowledge about the actual programming language plus the development frameworks, libraries, APIs, etc. Only because I am an reasonable C embedded/kernel developer and an experienced C++, C++ STL/Boost and Qt developer doesn't mean I can do Rust GUI development within any reasonable amount of time.

[Hahihula]

Thanks for the clarification regarding your build environment. It's clear that you're an experienced developer, and nobody is questioning your ability to build software or your background in C/C++.

That said, we're at a point where we simply don't have enough technical information to investigate this further.

You asked how to produce logs, and I pointed you to the issue reporting documentation. Despite that, no runtime logs, build logs, or any additional diagnostic output have been provided. Without those, there is nothing concrete for us to analyze—we would only be guessing.

I'd also like to reiterate that Gentoo is not a supported platform for EIM. As mentioned previously, we do not have the infrastructure to reproduce, test, or debug Gentoo-specific issues, and we are not able to assist with investigating problems that occur only on Gentoo. If you would like to pursue this further, the investigation will need to happen on your side. If you identify the root cause and can provide actionable findings (for example, logs, a clear diagnosis, or a proposed fix), we'll gladly review them.

Likewise, we won't be introducing changes that only benefit an unsupported distribution, nor can we validate or test changes on Gentoo.

At this point, the available paths forward are:

• provide the requested logs and diagnostic output as described in the issue reporting documentation;
• investigate the issue locally and share actionable findings or a proposed patch; or
• reproduce the problem on one of our officially supported platforms, if applicable.

Until then, there isn't anything actionable for us to do on our side, so I'm going to consider this blocked pending additional technical information.